T relationship mimics distance and rejection in real life relationships

I´ve thought about the therapeutic relationship and that I quite often feel bad, disappointed or sad after meeting with a T. At the moment I see a counselor and it´s not therapy in a traditional meaning but the relationship is similar.

I understand why there has to be certain rules and boundaries in a therapeutic relationship but I´ve realized that to me a lot of what goes on in such a relationship mimics distance and rejection in real life relationships.

• The fact that the T (in most cases) share very little of themselves is similar to me to the relationships I´ve had with classmates, knowing almost nothing about them and feeling lonely.

• That there is very little reciprocity makes me feel like when I was little and tried to join in on different games during play breaks in school.

• There is a huge distance between me and the T as she doesn´t share much and I share a lot, I feel I spill my heart out and mostly the T won´t express anything even if I share sad stuff. It´s the optimal rejection.

• It´s also very similar to the relationships I´ve had with friends in an adult age. That the time is very limited, about an hour, is the same to me as when a friend has very limited time to see me. Perhaps she has a child or work and I´m a very low priority.

• To a T I´m a very low priority as well, she has both other clients and other family and friends, to me that´s rejection as well.

When looking at it this way I understand why I often feel bad over therapy and now when I see this counselor some of those thoughts come up as well. It´s not that I want to give up on therapy all together and the rules and boundaries won´t change even if I feel this way.

But therapy is really a trigger for negative feelings and creates a concentrate of rejection and distance.

Someone else who feel like this?

To some extent, therapy is designed to be triggering.

Yes, except that for me it's the opposite direction: it's me who tends to reject and leave them, without any "termination process", and refuse what I perceive as dependency and attachment. In spite of being quite aware that I am doing this. I left both a very mediocre/dogmatic/insecure and a very smart/highly professional/secure therapist around the one-year mark and have this idea that I don't want to be in very long-term therapy. I have done similar in quite a few of my personal relationships (leaving them after ~a year) before. The T's quality certainly played a role in how I dealt with them but it's much more than that.

Now I'm not in therapy and yet I am on this forum discussing it everyday. I find it so interesting that even the intense awareness does not help it much... I often have the same feeling about many different kinds of transference. We can understand inside out and it still sticks, perhaps less so and won't act out so often, but still. These patterns are indeed stubborn and my T relationships brought out some patterns beautifully.

I wonder if you are searching for things in relationships that can only be found in real, deep relationships. I only say this because I am in the same boat. I am searching for something that is elusive, and it is hard, but I do believe that it is out there if I have the strength, patience and courage to find it. I hope you can a) figure out what you do need and b) go out there and get it for yourself. Things don't just appear on our plates, it takes effort and dedication to get them, but as they say, anything worthwhile, is worth working for (or something like that, I am not good with sayings!!).

Your relationship with T just reminds you of what you don't have. Me too. Seeing that is a huge , huge step towards getting it, but that isn't going to help us if we don't take action.

Yes! What I have also alluded to above. Awareness is much better than denial, but it's only the first, mental, step toward holistic change. One of my issues is that awareness tends to come relatively easily to me, but action much less so. Get stuck in the mind as though knowing by itself were the change itself.

I also very much believe that people for positive, satisfying, lasting relationships are out there but we need to make the effort to create and maintain it. And that's is what's challenging because we need to go against ingrained internal currents in many ways.

Absolutely. I desperately want the connection but am terrified of it at the same time, and making it happen goes against everything I ever taught myself about locking myself away. Thank you for saying all of that, I feel less alone in my craziness. And also, the bit about thinking the knowing itself were the change. It isn't.

Sorry Sarah, this is your post, not mine, but I just saw all of this in what you had written. I wonder what you think or feel about that?

One of therapy's functions can be to raise your awareness of your relational patterns and it seems like therapy has highlighted some of the ways in which you relate to others outside therapy.
At the moment this feels like a painful reenactment, but actually here is where the paths of real life relationships and therapeutic relationships diverge. Unlike real life relationships, you are free to discuss what is happening for you within the relationship and express your feelings towards the therapist (hopefully) without being judged or shamed.
For me this opportunity has allowed me to figure out my role in different relationships and also to have a relationship with somebody who does not ultimately reject me, but who accepts me without prejudice.
It is the one-sided boundaries which make this possible. My T doesn't need anything from me, his needs are met elsewhere, therefore he doesn't defend his own self-structure in his relationship with me - he is able to focus solely on my needs and I can use the relationship as I need to without fear of hurting him.
I think what ultimately separates this from other relationships is that both client and therapist go into the relationship with a mutual understanding of the boundaries and function of the relationship. That clarity removes all the foggy confusion which can make real life relationships so dysfunctional.

Yes, I felt like this, only it took me a long time to feel that feeling -- I was in "people-pleasing", "admire the therapist" mode for waayyyyyyy too long.

Congrats for picking up on this in yourself so early in the game. Maybe it won't have to be a game for you, maybe it can really help, early. Hope so.

I agree with Echos. Therapy and the interactions with a therapist can raise awareness about relationship patterns and perceptions about life that cause pain outside of therapy. Because it's one-sided, it's less complicated than a real life relationship where we can get caught up in endless back and forthing over who said/did what. So in this way, therapy can act like a mirror for those who want to use it that way. It takes a good therapist to not get caught up in counter transference (reacting to the person's transferences), but when it works, it can be really helpful--painful, as you point out, but helpful. Because once you go, oh, ouch, this is how I experience life outside of therapy, you can work to explore other ways of living and being that make life more tolerable, if not better.

A lot of the time, the question for me is: How can therapy help me to make more of my real-life relationships?

I used to categorize my relationships very much like you seem to do (please correct me if I'm wrong) into meaningful vs. superficial/not meaningful.
It was an either-or question. So a connection is either meaningful or it isn't. At all.

It took me a long time to realize (and then to start acting on it) that seems to be more of a relationship continuum. Relationships can be both. And it gets better: maybe even both at the same time (or almost).

I can have really meaningful moments with superficial connections like people from work. Or with my nextdoor neighbour.

And even in the relationships that are the most meaningful to me, there are superficial moments, and there need to be as well, as it would be impossible imo to constantly maintain that intense level of connection.

So for me it goes as this: Yes, the T relationship is limited. And I knew right from the start. And yet I go every week and my T helps me tremendously. Sometimes I desperately wish that there weren't limits and boundaries. Sometimes I'm wishing for more. Much more. And I know the feeling of despair that comes out of this. Because what I'm wishing for is unattainable and I know it very well. And yet, for me my T relationship/s (several ones I've seen over the years) are meaningful. I know that each of my Ts cares/cared about me. Yes, I am their job. But at the same time, they showed to me in no uncertain terms, that they are invested in my wellbeing, that they want me to get better, to be happy in life. There are moments in my sessions when there is a deep, meaningful connection. And I know, it's not just me projecting things onto my T, because we keep talking about this. And T keeps telling me to remember the feeling/s of those moments, to set an anchor so I can keep going back to this whenever I'm in need of finding solid ground again.

For me, connection in relationships tend to happen, whenever I'm grounded, aware of my feelings and needs, and as a result, I'm able to be true to myself. It even happens in this stupid art therapy group I never wanted join in the first place .

I have tremendous difficulties with being true to myself. I tend to pick up on expectations, rules, dos and don'ts really quickly and make those my inner compass. Which results in me being superficially nice and polite, but not very tangible for whoever I am interacting with. More like a robot, but not human.

For me, therapy is the safe space where I can experiment with being true to myself. To try to forget about my fears of rejection and abandonment and being "not right", and just try to be myself. Including all the contradictions this brings along. And to find out what happens. How this makes me feel. How the other person might react. And from this therapy space I can gradually venture out into my real life relationships. And I've learnt: The world doesn't collapse, people (or most of them anyway) don't desert me, and the meaningful moments in relationships tend to happen whenever I pull off my robot-suit and just start being me.

Hoping you will find a place where therapy starts to be helpful to you and not just bring more pain into your life.
c_r

I don't mean to be rude, but are you sure you understand what therapy is about?

A therapist is a person who is educated to help you with methods well proven (to be of benefit for MI-persons). A therapist is not a paid friend! The therapist is a person who has the right to be treated with the same respect as others. You don't ring up the postman and bombard him with questions about his private life, you don't do that when you bump into a coffeehouse,...

Point number one to be helped is to respect your therapist as a professional helper.

If you feel rejected you are to bring that up as a topic. May be it will help you to talk about former rejection. That you are in contact with it (the feelings of rejection) might be a sign about something healthy in you that you can build upon. If development fails over time, may be it's time to think about a therapist who practice another theoretical frame for her/his professional work.

Please stop to want more from your therapist than he/she can give! If you are willing to do that, may be that will be your turning- point, the first step on the road to a better life!

Send my best wishes for your recovery!

I agree, I don't think a therapy relationship is any different to a normal one.

T's are not really healers, they are mentors. They can only teach you, not force you to learn or understand, or take action, or change.

They ultimately will treat you in roughly the same manner as anyone else in your life treats you. It's healthy to expect that IMO

I do understand where you're coming from, and I experience a lot of loneliness. However, the therapeutic relationship for me is that one place in my life I can be myself 100% without judgment. I think it needs to be one-sided, as hard as that can be sometimes, because that's how my T is able to be there for me- because it's all about me, not her. To me, that is total acceptance not rejection. She accepts me, even when I have trouble accepting myself. She's safe and encouraging and all the things I need from her. While it can be hard knowing it's not reciprocal, in some ways it is so much better. I'm sorry you're hurting

Thanks. Yes, I believe I do and in some ways I can find a kind of deep connection in therapy because of the things we discuss but more often than that I feel the distance and the rejection. Nice to hear that someone experiences similar things.

I have really tried to find this deep connection in real life but it´s harder when you don´t have friends from childhood and have to build new friendships as an adult.

I see a risk in having those feelings I describe as they partly stops me from sharing more freely how I feel and talk about things I need and want to talk about. I always have those feelings of a fake relationship.

I have been thinking about this myself lately. How therapy in itself is very triggering just because of the relationship. It seems some days I feel like I'm worse than when I started therapy. I know I have seen others say those same words on here before.

Since I put t in more of a professional teacher role, I don't see similarities between her and my relationships with friends, whether good or bad. I don't think of t as being distant, but of keeping good boundaries so she can help me; that's what I pay her for. I don't want her sharing herself with me bc that would waste my time and money. I think if I thought of t as a friend or hoped she'd be my friend, then I'd feel very sad and pretty awful most of the time, simply bc the therapy relationship is not set up to be anything like a friendship.

Thanks. I agree there´s more freedom to express myself within a therapy or with the counselor I see at the moment. But one thing I also see is that this counselor creates more feelings of distance and rejection than my T who worked within a relational psychodynamic therapy did. That is, I know a T has her freedom to choose to share things about herself in a balanced way and my counselor doesn´t share a thing.

In the beginning I didn´t think of that but now after we´ve seen each other for 10+ times I think it´s too secretive of her to not share a thing about herself, to comment on something I say by letting me know something about her. I don´t mean private stuff but a thing like "I also like walks" or "I also watched that TV program" or something similar.

To me such an attitude, as I know a lot of T:s nowadays share things about themselves, just makes me feel she keeps an unnecessary distance that doesn´t benefit our relationship.

Thanks for sharing. I agree I do categorize relationships as you describe, if they are meaningful or not. I have a hard time with relationships that are good in some ways but have several negatives as well.

I think you mention something very important and that´s that you feel you get tremendous help from your therapist and that´s of course the main thing. I haven´t really felt this as I already have a lot of insights myself, not to brag, and the counselor in this case doesn´t really bring anything new to my case so to speak.

I´m still glad I can see her as it´s so hard to get therapy and it´s rewarding when it comes to share thoughts but it doesn´t bring anything new really.

I was surprised how much I recognize myself in how you describe this "robot like" way of being, acting in a superficial way, acting nice and polite and having a hard time being true to oneself. It´s exactly how I often feel!

I think about that quite often, that people perhaps see me like a "professor" or someone intelligent but I wonder if they get something more out of me. I think about this and get afraid it´s something wrong with me that can´t be fixed. For how long have you worked on this in therapy?

Thanks. Yes, I agree it has to be one-sided to a certain extent but as I´ve read a lot about therapy and I´ve also met with many T:s in evaluation I know their attitude towards sharing stuff, letting clients in some minutes before the session starts and so on are very shifting.

My first T worked within a relational psychodynamic therapy and she shared something almost every time. Something little like briefly mentioning a TV program she´d seen or a singer she liked. To me such things reduces feelings of rejection and distance. It helps creating a more balanced relationship and it´s also a therapy technique that´s designed to have a certain purpose when the T shares things, offers a glass of water and such.

I don´t feel that accepted, even if I don´t think my counselor dislikes me, when she sits more strictly and analyses what I say, ask me questions and such. Instead it feels rather cold to be met in such a way.

My time with Madame T definitely improved my relationships with other people.

Because of your time in therapy or because other people were so much better compared to her?

I found the opposite to be true. Most of my therapists, in varying degrees, had their own self-image and identity wrapped up in the relationship. They were there to feel needed or in control, sometimes desperately so. I get sense that Sarah's therapists have been asserting covert needs for power and control. I think one of the big lies of therapy is the image of the selfless therapist. No way. They are drawing hard on the therapy bong, when you are not looking.

I have found therapy relationships the most confusing, most ambiguous, least defined of any I have had. Real life relationships arise out of spontaneous circumstances and have context that orients you. They are held together by mutuality and authenticity (ideally). Therapy relationships are contrived and held together with string and twigs.

I think Sarah's observations in the orig post are totally valid, and not due to any misunderstanding. This idea that feeling rejected in therapy is some sort of path to healing is absurd. Nobody in this biz takes first do no harm seriously. Feeling rejected, degraded, abandoned, suicidal... it's ok, it's all part of "the process"!

Both, I think.
Madame T enabled me to talk about my feelings but she also absorbed a lot of my anger. Too bad she reflected so much back.

This is really insightful.

The discomfort you feel in therapy is instructive - it's shining a light on what is concerning for you in real life. That was the first step in my own therapy: I felt a lot of anxiety but I had no idea what I was anxious about, and identifying those concerns was instrumental in dealing with them.

An argument could be made that psychodynamic therapy may not be the best option for you because the feeling of isolation will be too strong. Perhaps you would benefit more something like CBT or ACT. Therapists in these modalities are more 'human' in their interactions with their clients, which may be what you need.

I did not find the cbt thing to mean the therapist was more human. If anything, cbt made the therapist much less human. I am not saying it may not be for someone - just that humaness and the therapist were not my experience of cbt